By Robert L. Heilbroner

1 By Robert L. HeilbronerTHE WORLDLY PHILOSOPHERSBEHIND THE VEIL OF ECONOMICSTHE ESSENTIAL ADAM SMITHTHE NATURE AND LOGIC OF CAPITALISMTHE FUTURE AS HISTORYMARXISM, FOR AND AGAINSTAN INQUIRY INTO THE HUMAN PROSPECTTHE GREAT ASCENTBETWEEN CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISMTHE LIMITS OF AMERICAN CAPITALISMTHE ECONOMIC PROBLEM(with James Galbraith)ECONOMICS EXPLAINED(with Lester C. Thurow)THE DEBT AND THE DEFICIT(with Peter L. Bernstein)THE MAKING OF ECONOMIC SOCIETY(with William Milberg)21ST CENTURY AMERICAN CAPITALISMTHE CRISIS OF VISION IN MODERN ECONOMIC THOUGHT(with William Milberg)THE ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA(with Aaron Singer)VISIONS OF THE FUTURE TEACHINGS FROM THE WORLDLY PHILOSOPHYTOUCHSTONER ockefeller Center1230 Avenue of the AmericasNew York, NY 1953, 1961, 1967, 1972, 1980, 1992,1999 by Robert L.

2 HeilbronerCopyright renewed 1981, 1989, 1995 by Robert L. HeilbronerAll rights reserved,including the right of reproductionin whole or in part in any Seventh EditionTOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster in the United States of America 19 20 18 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataHeilbroner, Robert worldly philosophers : the lives, times, and ideas of thegreat economic thinkers / Robert L. Heilbroner . Rev. 7th cm. A Touchstone book. Includes bibliographical references and Economists Biography. 2. Economics 1999330 .092 2 dc21[b] 99-14050 CIPISBN 0-684-86214-XeISBN 978-1-4391-4482-4To my teachersPreface tothe Seventh EditionThis is the seventh revision of a book I wrote some forty-six years ago, making The WorldlyPhilosophers today a good deal older than I was when I wrote it.

3 The altogether unforeseen life spanof this venture, undertaken when I was still a graduate student, serves as an excuse briefly to tell itsstory, before saying a word with respect to important changes that have been made in this latest, and, Iexpect, last pursuing my graduate studies in the early 1950s, I earned my living as a free-lance writer,ranging very far from economics when the need or the occasion presented itself. As a consequence ofone or another such piece, Joseph Barnes, a senior editor at Simon & Schuster, asked me to lunch toexplore various book ideas. None of them seemed quite right, and a pall fell as the salad arrived and Irealized that my first publisher s lunch was not likely to result in a book contract.

4 Barnes, however,was not so easily discouraged. He began asking me about my graduate studies at the New School forSocial Research and I found myself talking with enthusiasm about a particularly fascinating seminaron Adam Smith that I was taking under the inspired teaching of Adolph Lowe, of whom the readerwill learn more later in this book. Before dessert had arrived we both knew that I had found mysubject. After my next class I hastened to tell Professor Lowe of my determination to write a historyof the evolution of economic very exemplar of German scholarship at its formidable best, Lowe was aghast. That youcannot do!

5 He declared with magisterial finality. But I had the strong conviction that I could do it born, as I have written elsewhere, of the necessary combination of confidence and ignorance that onlya graduate student could have possessed. Between free-lance assignments and further studies, Iproduced the first three chapters and with some trepidation showed them to Professor Lowe. It is ameasure of that remarkable man (who remained, until his death at 102, my warmest and severestcritic) that after he read the pages he said, That you must do! With his help, that is what I book written, it was necessary to find a title.

6 I was aware that the word economics wasdeath at the box office, and I racked my brains for a substitute. A second crucial lunch then took placewith Frederick Lewis Allen, editor of Harper s magazine, for whom I had done a number of pieces,and who had been extraordinarily kind and helpful to me. I told him about my title difficulties, andsaid that I was thinking of calling the book The Money Philosophers, although I knew money wasn t quite right. You mean worldly, he said. I said, I ll buy lunch. My publishers were not as pleased with the title as I was, and after the book to everyone ssurprise began to sell, they suggested retitling it The Great Economists.

7 Fortunately nothing came ofthis. Perhaps they anticipated that the public would not be able to master worldly, which has indeedbeen misspelled wordly on a thousand students papers, or perhaps they foresaw difficulties suchas one about which I heard many years later. A student inquired at his college bookstore about a bookwhose author s name he could not remember, but whose queer title was, to the best of hisrecollection, A World Full of Lobsters. Over the years The Worldly Philosophers has sold more copies than I could have imaginedpossible, and has lured, I am told, tens of thousands of unsuspecting victims into a course oneconomics.

8 I cannot answer for the pains that may have been experienced as a consequence, but Ihave had the pleasure of hearing from a number of economists that their interest was first aroused bythe vision of economics conveyed by the edition differs from previous editions in two respects. The first is that, as before, a fresh lookat its pages enables me to rectify the errors that inevitably creep into manuscripts or that are revealedby research after publication. It is a chance, as well, to alter emphases and interpretations that reflectmy own evolving views. These changes are small, noticeable perhaps only to scholars in the field,and not of sufficient significance in themselves to warrant a new second change is more important.

9 For some time I had been considering whether there might notbe an important thread missing from my book a thread that would tie together its chapters morefirmly than a mere chronology of remarkable men with interesting ideas. Then, a few years ago, Ibecame convinced that precisely such a thread existed in the changing concepts the visions thatlay behind all social analysis. That idea was broached in the 1950s by Josef Schumpeter, one of themost imaginative of the worldly philosophers. Insofar as Schumpeter himself did not apply his insightto the history of economic thought, I hope I may be forgiven for having missed it myself for so this preface I do not want to discuss further this new view of the evolution of the worldlyphilosophy that would be like announcing the plot of a mystery novel before the action had evenbegun.

10 Hence, although the role of social vision will be mentioned many times as we go along, notuntil we reach our last chapter will we stop to consider its relevance for our own leads to a final remark. A reader who has already turned this page may have noted that thatconcluding chapter has a strange title: The End of the Worldly Philosophy? The question markmakes clear that this is not a pronouncement of doom, but it certainly implies a change in the characterof our subject. As to what that change may be, we will have to wait until the very end of the book, notto tease the reader, but because only at the end which is to say, today does that change challengethe nature and significance of economic thought all that remains to be demonstrated.